Honor Bound(29)

Not only was he implying that she didn't belong on this wild plateau with him, but also that she couldn't begin to understand the depth of his grief and that he resented her thinking she could.

"I'm sorry about your grandfather."

His eyes narrowed dangerously. "What could you possibly care about the death of an old, useless Indian?"

Tears smarted in her eyes at his harsh words. "Why do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Cruelly shut other people out, people who are trying to help you."

"I don't need anybody's help." He looked at her with open scorn. "Especially yours."

"Do you think you're the only person on earth who has ever been disillusioned, or hurt, or betrayed?"

"You have? In your ivory palace?"

The contemptuous question didn't merit an answer. She could have told him there were endless varieties of abuse but swapping tales of woe would have been ridiculous. Besides, she was too angry at him for spurning her sympathy. "You carry your bitterness like a shield to protect yourself. You hide behind your anger like a coward who is afraid to get caught experiencing some human warmth. Someone offers you tenderness, and you misread it as pity. Anyway, we all need to be pitied at times."

"Well then," he said silkily, "pity me."

He moved with the speed of summer lightning and his touch was just as electrifying. His hand shot out and sank into her hair, winding the long strands around his fist and yanking her head forward. He tilted it back so far she feared her neck would snap.

"You're feeling benevolent toward the Indians, hmm? Well let's see just how much."

His mouth came crashing down on hers. The contact was brutal and punishing. She made an outraged sound deep in her throat, but it had no effect on him. If anything, his fist wound tighter in her hair and his lips pressed harder upon hers.

Moving her head was out of the question, so she gripped his biceps and tried to push him away. The skin beneath her grasp was warm and smooth. The muscles felt like braided cables of steel. Her efforts were to no avail.

Raising his lips only inches above hers, he smiled sardonically. "Ever been kissed by an Indian, Miss Andrews? It'll be something you can tell your friends about the next time you have a tea party."

He ground his lips against hers again. This time, she experienced a sense of falling and realized only when she felt rocks digging into her back that he had lowered her to the ground. He stretched above her, covering one side of her body with his.

"No!" she gasped when he released her mouth to press hot kisses into her neck just below her jaw. She tried to kick, but he threw his long leg over hers, imprisoning them beneath his thigh.

"What's the matter? Lost your taste for pity so soon?" he mocked. "Taste this."

He kissed her again. She felt the probing of his tongue against her lips and stubbornly kept them sealed together. His hand released her hair and caught her just under the jaw. Hard fingers squeezed until she had no choice but to open her mouth or risk her jawbone being shattered.

His tongue thrust its way into her mouth. It was an angry, plundering, ravishing, hurtful intruder. Silently she screamed in mortification and fury, struggling against him, arching her back above the hard ground in an effort to throw him off.

All she accomplished was to get his knee wedged between her thighs and his hips intimately pressing upon hers. Desperate to end the savage embrace, she curled both hands into claws and reached for his face.

But the moment her fingertips came into contact with his face, she felt the wet patches on his cheekbones. Immediately, her wrath was banished and replaced by wonder. Her fingers relaxed their curled tension, and she used them to blindly explore the chiseled ridges of his cheekbones and the almost gaunt planes beneath them.

Her lack of resistance squelched his brutal intent as well, and he lifted his mouth from hers. Silently they stared into each other's eyes—his so beautifully incongruous with the rest of his face; hers blue, awash with her own tears.

She saw her hand move of its own accord and touch the damp streaks on his face. She traced the salty track of one of his tears all the way down to his chin. To think of the absolute grief it had taken to make a man of stone like him cry caused Aislinn's heart to pound.

Lucas stared down into her face and instantly regretted what he saw. Her lips were discolored and swollen from the anger behind his kiss. Never in his life had he physically mistreated a woman. The thought of it made him ill.

He moved slightly, intending to lift himself off her. But Aislinn's hands were still resting on his cheeks. She was studying his mouth. He paused.

"I warned you not to look at me like that again," he said roughly.

She didn't move.

"I told you what would happen if you did."

She didn't alter her expression either.

It lasted for only a heartbeat, but his hesitation seemed to stretch out for an eternity before he made a hungry, mating sound and lowered his lips once again to hers.

This kiss was vastly different. His mouth was changed. It settled over hers gently, despite the yearning sounds that it emitted. He rubbed his lips over hers, a comfort-giving, forgiveness-asking gesture.

She responded by letting her lips part. But slightly. Slightly. So that when his tongue touched the seam of her lips, it had to probe them gently to gain the sweet inside.